Safe Harbor
by karebear
Summary: After-Kirkwall headcanon (approximately 6 years after DA2). Anders' kids share a bonding moment.


Matty sits on the dock, dragging his feet slowly through the cold water. The gentle waves of the lake lap at his toes. Reflections of bright sunlight glimmer off of the deeper, darker water far away. If he squints, he can see the black outline of the far shore, miles and miles in the distance. He shivers as a cold wind nips across his bare skin. Summer is ending. When it began, he was in a completely different place: a big, bustling city so far removed from this quiet island that sometimes it's hard to believe that he is the same person, that the same person could move between such radically different worlds.

He yawns, and stretches, fumbling for his shirt. The fabric snags and catches on a loose board, and he frowns down at the clothing before giving up and crumpling it up into a ball tight enough to fit into his clenched fist. He begins the long walk up the hill toward the looming grey tower, dragging his feet.

"Hey, what's that?"

Matty spins around to see a tiny child hopping up and down, scrambling to follow him. He can barely see her face beneath the tangles of wavy dark hair, even if she were sitting still enough for him to actually meet her eyes, which she isn't. "What?" he mutters, continuing to walk. His bare feet squish through the mud left over from days of rain that finally seems to have stopped.

"_That_," the little girl responds, without missing a beat. She reaches out, pointing toward the tattoo that covers most of his right shoulder. He pulls away before she can touch him. "It's a bird, right?"

"Yeah," he grunts.

"Why?"

_Why? _"I don't know," he finds himself saying. "It just is."

"I like it."

"Thanks?" Matty replies uneasily, uncertain of how he's supposed to respond to this opinion he didn't ask for.

"I'm Lexa," the girl presses on, still oblivious to the fact that she'd intruded into his solitude, creating a conversation where there wasn't one. It's not something he's used to. Matty doesn't hang around kids much. He never has, not even when he was one.

"I know," he tells her. There aren't that many people living in the tower, less even than stayed at the Pearl back when that was home. He knows who she is.

"Are you fixing the boat?" Lexa asks. She continues to voice her thoughts aloud without waiting for – or caring about – his responses. Matty stops, sighs, and turns back toward the lake, where a small sailboat bobs calmly, tapping against the sand of the shallow beach.

"I guess," he admits.

"Can I help?" She is already beginning to run down toward the boat, despite the increasing coolness of the afternoon, without waiting for an answer. Matty follows her, more slowly, but a smile creeps onto his face. Her enthusiasm is annoyingly contagious, though he hides it, for the most part. He sits on the edges of the sailboat and leans his head back to stare at the blue sky, where hints of gray are just beginning to touch the clouds that gather over the forest. He knows that a storm can sweep in quickly, but he's used to being outdoors in all weather, and though he may not be able to get inside before the rain pounds down again, if it does, it doesn't seem like something worth complaining or worrying about. Lexa runs her hand over the boat's railing, back and forth, back and forth, and seems not even to notice the sky.

"Do you _know _anything about boats?" he asks pointedly.

"Do you?" She stares him down with all the superiority only a five-year-old can muster. Matty finds his smile growing wider.

"Not really."

"I've been on boats before. Lots." Matty nods absently. She came here with Cullen and Mel, from Val Royeaux, from Kirkwall. She might be able to call this place "home" more than any of them. "I've been lots of places," she insists, confirming what he's heard. It doesn't surprise him that she's spent her childhood – well, at least up 'til now – living a nomadic existence. Following armies.

Lexa stretches up on her tiptoes as she talks, trying to make herself seem taller, more grown up. "Have you?" she demands.

"Not really."

"Oh. You're from Denerim, right? I've never been there," she adds, before Matty has a chance to give an answer one way or another. The girl lapses into blessed silence for a couple of heartbeats before she speaks again, more quietly this time. "Do you miss your mama?" she asks.

She doesn't look up at him, instead concentrating on the digging her fingernails into the grain of the wooden railing. Her voice is barely above a whisper. Her fingers clutch tightly to a smooth, black amulet hanging from around her neck.

Matty frowns. His ribcage constricts as he remembers the last time he'd seen his mother: delirious with fever, skin nearly as pale as the sweat-soaked sheets wrapped loosely around her too-thin form. He'd held her hand, brushed his fingers through her tangled hair, and tried as hard as he could to help her with his untrained and uncontrolled power, heedless of the risk he took with every passing breath. His skills weren't strong enough to help her.

Mel had healed her, able to work her magic – maybe the strongest of anyone still living, at least outside of Tevinter – without fear of repercussions from the templars that he'd spent years dodging. He'd seen them kill for minor cantrips, for even the hint of the demons' curse in a man's blood – or a child's. But the Hero of Ferelden did not fear them, so she'd sat patiently at the bedside of a whore, healing without being asked, while Matty watched helplessly, back pressed against the corner of the darkened, too-small room in the human slums that backed up against the alienage walls.

When she finally woke, Leah barely spoke to him. Instead she cuffed him and told him he should have known better than to use his magic foolishly trying to heal her. She'd said something about the Maker taking her if it was her time, and Matty had scowled at her silently, because Leah rarely ever mentioned the Maker, and he's pretty sure she'd never believed in anything that didn't put coin in her pocket or food on the table. Then she forced him out, told him to go with Mel, the living legend who stared at him when she thought he didn't notice, studying him as though trying to recognize something important in him without ever telling him what it was.

"No," he lies, in answer to Lexa's question.

The little girl glares at him, hands on her hips. He thinks she might be about to accuse him of lying, but she doesn't. She just shakes her head. "I don't have a mama," she tells him, matter-of-factly.

Matty grunts softly.

He knows who her parents are. Were. Everybody does, no matter how often Mel and Cullen tell them all that it doesn't matter, that the choices other people made a long time ago do not define them. Matty doesn't really care one way or the other about the renegade leaders of the mage war. The Demons of Kirkwall had no relevence to his daily survival on the streets of Denerim. Whispered rumors of their deaths and holy proclamations ringing out loudly from the voices of the Chantry's criers were just starting to reach the city in the weeks his mother struggled through her sickness.

"I dream about them sometimes," Lexa continues, quietly. When Matty looks at her, she's frowning. He can _feel _a kind of stillness in her, beyond the fact that she's actually just sitting still, no longer a restless bundle of motion. She inhales a deep, shaky breath. He thinks she looks like she's about to cry.

Without thinking, he reaches for a chunk of the scrap wood he'd taken down to the boat with him earlier. He flips his knife open and begins to scrape his knife over the chunk of wood, shaping it.

"I have bad dreams too, sometimes," he tells her. He concentrates on his carving, smoothing the rough edges into smooth curves, tracing deeper lines.

"Really?"

"Yeah. When I was a kid, I used to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, fighting the blankets. I _usually _won." He sighs, choosing to remember the nights Leah had let him crawl into bed with her, instead of screaming at him, smacking him, or kicking him out. "And I do miss her," he admits.

"I think it's okay to love somebody, even when they're not here," Lexa says cautiously. Testing out the words, the idea. Testing his reaction.

"I think you have to," Matty agrees. He hands her the toy he'd been working on, a quick approximation of a dragon, contained in fleeting impressions more than fine details. It fits perfectly into her small hand.

"What's this for?"

He shrugs. "I dunno. I thought you'd like it."

She smiles up at him. "I do. Thanks, Matty." She crawls into his lap without asking, and he wraps his arm around her as the rain begins to fall again. He keeps her dry.


End file.
